Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Putin’s Latest Round of Escalation in Ukraine has Three Goals, Commentators Say

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 12 – There are no
guarantees that Vladimir Putin’s current escalation of military actions in
Ukraine will not lead to a full-scale war, although that is unlikely, Ukrainian
analysts say. Instead, two of them argue today that the Kremlin leader has
three more limited goals and that if Kyiv is to defend itself, it must
recognize exactly what these are.

In a commentary on Kyiv’s Novoye
vremya portal, Vladimir Fesenko, head of the Penta Center for Political
Research, says that “the most probable scenario is a local escalation of the
conflict, something like a new Debaltsevo” to force Kyiv to make concessions
and to spark a new anti-Maidan Maidan (nv.ua/opinion/fesenko/gotova-li-rossija-k-bolshoj-vojne-63654.html).

Given that the
Minsk negotiating process has run into a dead end, he continues, Russia wants
to get it moving, of course, “in its own interests.”That, Fesenko says, is “a classic tactic of
hybrid war and a forced movement toward peace on its conditions.” That is
exactly what Putin did in Georgia in 2008, and he is doing it again.

Ukraine lacks the ability at present
to fight a big war and the West is frightened by that possibility, Fesenko
says. But Russia “now is not ready for either a full-scale war with Ukraine or
even more for a major confrontation with the West.” But frightening both with that
possibility is “a beloved tactic of Putin.”

But in this case, the Kremlin leader
has a second goal: to inflict on Ukrainian forces a defeat sufficiently serious
to “provoke in Ukraine a political crisis” and spark “a third Maidan.”That is “Putin’s dream, and this,
unfortunately,” Fesenko argues, “also could be one of the reasons” behind the
latest attacks.

Putin’s new
aggression may have more limited military-political goals such as expelling
Ukrainian forces from cities in the Donbas, for example, Fesenko says, and
Ukrainians must do what they can to block Russian forces in this regard as
well. But Kyiv must focus its attention and its resources on opposing Putin’s
two main goals.

Igor Guz, deputy chairman of the Verkhovna
Rada foreign relations committee, adds a third.He suggests that Putin has launched his new wave of aggression now to
destabilize the Ukrainian economy and block the country’s integration with the
European Union and expanded cooperation with NATO (charter97.org/ru/news/2015/8/12/164235/).

By sometimes
cutting back military actions and sometimes increasing them as now, Putin keeps
Ukraine off balance and undermines support for it in the West because
governments there think there is a chance that if they are cooperative, Putin
will reduce his aggression once again and there will be “progress.”

But more immediately, Putin’s
off-again-on-again approach keeps Ukraine from taking the steps to improve its
economy and thus be in a position to integrate with the European Union. What
Kyiv must do, Guz says, is simultaneously build up its military capacity and
reform its economy. That is not easy, Kyiv has a long way to go, but it has no
other choice.